Superintendent

Dear Students and Parents,

Welcome to the 2018-19 school year. We are excited and looking forward to your return. Teachers are finalizing their preparation for your learning and are looking forward to making a difference in your life.

To all the new parents and students, thank you for entrusting us with your child's education. We take this responsibility very seriously and will work diligently to gain your trust and confidence.

We have continued to evaluate our focus of “Creating a Performance Culture Focused on Student Achievement.” The Cornerstones of this plan are still important to our success:

Safe and Well Disciplined Schools

Rigorous and Engaged Classrooms

Strong Student Support

Well Maintained Facilities

As a community we need everyone’s help in addressing the following:

A SAFE school environment is always at the top of our list for improvement. We value the basic need of providing a safe school environment. Dusty Hawkins will serve as the system’s safety coordinator and will work with all schools to ensure our students are safe. We have made several improvements to our facilities this summer to address safety including a redesign of the foyer at the elementary school. A new safety APP called CrisisGo is being rolled out to all staff members. CrisisGo brings all our team's safety communication together, empowering everyone with tools and information to help each other at the time of an emergency. An additional School Resource Officer (SRO) is being added to ensure that all schools have an SRO on campus.

We continue to value the attendance of students and believe attendance is critical to successful academic engagement and achievement. Students who meet high levels of attendance perform at higher levels. We have great teachers and staff, and they want to help students succeed. We recognize that students get sick and have other medical obligations, and these instances are understandable and excusable. However, we will continue our focus on ensuring students are on-time and are in attendance the entire day. Our focus last year proved worthwhile in improving the district’s academic achievement. We ask that you help create an expectation of daily attendance.

Maintaining a well-disciplined classroom and maintaining high expectations for student behavior continue to be a focus. Please review the student code of conduct and discuss appropriate behavior with your child. This will help set the expectation for a positive learning environment. We will continue our implementation of Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) to reward students who exemplify appropriate behaviors.

As a system, we will continue building a positive school environment through efforts of - Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits. KASH is a culture that encompasses 21st century skills to be implemented K-12. We have rebranded KASH and will be adding a community interaction. KASH will be specialized for age-level understanding and practice. We encourage our community to embrace KASH and enhance the culture through recognition of students in the community.

I am happy to report that construction of the new high school and career academy is on schedule. The new high school and college and career academy will open in October in conjunction with fall break. High school parents and students will need to observe new traffic patterns. As soon as students are moved into the high school, we will immediately begin the demolition of the old high school and construction of the new middle school. Continue to be patient with our vision of upgrading our facilities.

Excitement is ringing in the air as we bring in a new school year. Madison and Morgan County are becoming a beehive of activity focused on supporting students. Jump in and help your child take advantage of the many wonderful opportunities which exist in the Morgan County Charter School System.

On behalf of the teachers and staff we look forward to serving you and your family. It will be our pleasure to welcome and teach your child on August 1st.